


shoot to miss

by publictransit



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Abuse of italics, M/M, and also curse words, and also the small town catholic experince™, dex's poor gay heart, my own poor gay heart also, this is frighteningly close to a character study at times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 16:11:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7940881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/publictransit/pseuds/publictransit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sternocleidomastoid.<br/>The word is clinical, but Dex has always liked the way it sounds, like it’s trying to stop itself inside of your mouth when you say it. Dex wonders if that means it has poetry, wonders if he should ask—<br/>Fuck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shoot to miss

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this really quickly and it has no beta because i've been in this fandom for three (3) days and i don't know anyone yet. title from sam smith.

Aidan still fits.

He fits like old jeans. A little bit short in the ankles, but soft at the knees. _Comfortable_.

He’s got big brown eyes. He was taller than Will until eleventh grade, when Will hit a growth spurt that left him with stretch marks like racing stripes on his spine. (He went from 5’4 to 6’2 in a little under a year. _Like a weed_ , Aidan said, looking up at him, only a little bitter, only a little teasing, only a little bit of something they weren’t talking about quite yet.) He freckles in the sun, though not half as badly as Will himself. Aidan’s more prone to moles, anyways, and Dex just knows that Nursey would have something to say about constellations versus galaxies, and—

Fuck.

Anyways. Aidan’s lips still fit against his throat. Not his throat exactly, but a muscle that ties his neck to his chest, that Will googled once, just so he’d know it by name.

Sternocleidomastoid.

The word is clinical, but Will has always liked the way it sounds, like it’s trying to stop itself inside of your mouth when you say it. Dex wonders if that means it has poetry, wonders if he should ask—

Fuck, _again._

Aidan. This is the story of Will and Aidan and four summers and two Thanksgivings and one Christmas and the back half of a reading week that Will made it home for without planning to, he just needed to get away—

To come home.

To Aidan.

That’s what Will wants, is Aidan, because Aidan is easy. Their parents know each other from church. They shared a first communion. Aidan is not his boyfriend, and they will never be boyfriends, because they are from the kind of town where _boyfriends_ is not a thing. Never mind that Will doesn’t live here anymore, his mail goes to Samwell, he shares a fucking bunkbed in another state with—

Fuck.

Aidan.

He wants to fuck Aidan.

Aidan’s got big brown eyes (not even little bit of green in there, brown like the dirt in a freshly turned garden, after the frost of a winter has killed every fucking plant that could have possibly grown there the summer before) and light brown hair (lighter than his eyes, not darker, and not curly either, just wavy if he let it get long enough) and he’s shorter than Will (not the exact same height, not like they were matched that way, not like neither of them would have to bend unless they wanted to, not like they line up). He’s nothing like—

Aidan.

✿ ✿ ✿

Dex is aggressively not thinking about it. And that’s been working for him. Mostly.

(Except for when he’s suddenly aggressively thinking about it, and if he humours himself for more than thirty seconds, he’ll end up with red cheeks or tears in his eyes because he’s a total fucking disaster, or he is when it comes to this, apparently, and—)  
  
He’s just not thinking about it.

✿ ✿ ✿

Aidan texts him on a Thursday in March.  
  
_Need to talk. Can I drive down?_  
  
Dex texts back, _of course_ , and the address of the Haus, and lays down on the bottom bunk and doesn’t jump to conclusions so much as he plummets through whatever he thought could be his rock bottom and just. Dwells on that.  
  
It’s a five hour drive. What’s so important that you need to drive five hours to talk about it in person on a Thursday in March?  
  
Dex can think of a few things, but one stands out.  
  
Nursey gets back from class just after four o'clock, and he slams the door behind him (even though Dex has asked him not to, like, probably a million times, the hardware on doors in a house this old won't last long if you take out every ounce of frustration you feel about your poetry seminar on it, dude) and Dex has killed most of five hours being completely stationary and profoundly stressed out (and occasionally drifting into fitful sleep, he’s not kidding himself here). The first thing Nursey says is,  
  
“Whoa. You look like shit.” Dex just sits up and pinches the bridge of his nose.  
  
“I need the attic tonight.”  
  
“Dude, for what?” Nursey raises an eyebrow at him, as if to say, _definitely not for action, see earlier comment about looking like shit._  
  
“One of my friends from back home is stopping by. I just need an hour.” The look Dex receives at that is a bit skeptical, and Nursey pointedly looks at his watch before nodding.  
  
“Sure. But when I get back, you have to listen to me complain about poetry today. You will not believe what Brandon said in class today—”  
  
“Okay, Nursey.” Dex cuts him off, looking at his hands when Nursey’s eyes get brighter as he launches into a story. Dex can’t deal with that right now. (He can’t deal with it right now as well, on top of whatever this is going to be, _oh god_.) Nursey makes it most of the way out the door before he stops and asks,  
  
“Seriously, are you okay?” Dex knows objectively that he doesn’t actually feel his heart stutter, but something happens, and if he were any less practiced at holding his hands folded together in his lap, he might reach up for his sternum, like he could comfort himself. Dex just nods until Nursey closes the door. Softly.

✿ ✿ ✿

“Some tiny blonde guy let me in.” Aidan says from the entry to the attic.  
  
“Bitty. Um, Eric. He’s great.” Dex replies.  
  
“He’s cute.” Aidan shrugs, trying at a smile.  
  
“Yeah.” Dex agrees, trying (and failing a little bit) to grin back.  
  
“Sorry if I freaked you out.” Aidan sits beside him on the bottom bunk. (He’s been sitting that way since Nursey left, his hands are still folded.)  
  
“Yeah.” Dex repeats.  
  
“It’s just- I’m freaking out.”  
  
“So you had to drag me into it?”  
  
“Yeah.” Aidan grins, a real one, smaller, and leans his shoulder into Dex’s. Dex bumps him back. “That’s kind of our thing, isn’t it?”  
  
“Yeah.” Aidan stands, walks about as far as he can get away from Dex in the modest attic space, sighs like it’s painful, and tells the desk, “I’ve been thinking about coming out.”  
  
They let it hang in the stale air for a moment. (Dex, Aidan, and the desk.)  
  
When they were sixteen, it was really easy to whisper to each other in corners and under bed sheets that this was between them, but Dex can feel it under his skin now, like smashed glass or sand. It’s not quite bursting to get out, but it’s right under the surface, and he can tell it’s about to start bleeding. (If it hasn’t already. He thinks of green eyes and poetry and black ink on broad hands and green eyes and the closeness of cold weather and green, green eyes—) Dex sighs, and it’s an echo of Aidan’s, the painful one.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Yeah?” Aidan spins, looking hunted, his big brown eyes bigger than ever. (And Dex has thought that before, looking at them from a different angle.) Dex holds out a hand, and Aidan comes over to him, stepping into the space between his knees, taking him, a hand for a hand, and just standing. Holding.  
  
“I’ve been thinking about it. A little,” and Dex isn’t lying. It’s in the quiet moments, when he’s not thinking about that thing he really definitely hasn't been thinking about, and in the silent ones, when he asks the wrong question and Lardo doesn’t answer him with anything more than a glare, and in moments like this one, when he’s holding hands, when his hands are being held, and the only noise in the room is two people breathing the same air, that he thinks he could say it loud enough to ruin the quiet.  
  
“We could do it together?” Dex blinks up at Aidan for a minute. “Not like that, idiot. I’m just saying, like strength in numbers. You can help me carry my bags to my car, and I’ll keep your Dad from flipping a table.” Dex laughs a little wetly.  
  
“Okay.” Dex nods.  
  
“Yeah.” Aidan says, again, and leans down, until his forehead is resting against Dex’s, with Dex face turned up, and the angle isn’t comfortable, but it’s familiar.  
  
Then Nursey flings open the door.  
  
“It’s been an hour! I come bearing gifts—”  
  
And he stops.  
  
And Dex still has one of Aidan’s hands in each of his own, and not even the practice of being closeted for five years in an unforgivingly conservative town can magically put space between bodies where no space existed before.  
  
“Oh, fuck,” Nursey says.  
  
He’s got a frozen yoghurt cup in either hand.  
  
Dex decides that this is poetic.  
  
He squeezes both of Aidan’s hands before he lets them go, and clears his throat.  
  
“You said an hour,” is what Nursey decides to go with, after a few hard blinks.  
  
“Could’ve used five more minutes. Or _knocking_ ,” Aidan snorts, and Dex punches him lightly. “Aidan, this is Nursey— Derek Nursey— Nurse.”  
  
“That’s my cue,” Aidan decides, loudly. “I’ll text you.” He drops a hand on Dex’s shoulder, squeezes, looks like he’s considering doing more than that, and then doesn’t. He steps away from Dex, and clasps Nursey on the shoulder on his way out. “He’s all yours, buddy.”  
  
Aidan closes the door to the attic behind him, and the latch sounds very final in the total absence of any other noise.  
  
“I got you froyo,” Nursey says.  
  
“I’m gay.” Dex replies.  
  
“Okay.” Nursey doesn’t move.  
  
“Can I have my yoghurt?” Dex prompts, holding out a hand. The way that Nursey springs into action is almost comical, all sudden, stilted movement, until Dex has a cup of yoghurt in his hand, and Nursey pauses, before softly sitting beside him on the bottom bunk. “So, what happened in poetry class?” Dex asks.   
  
Nursey smiles, and it’s all bright and genuine and white teeth and lopsided a little and it makes those green eyes a little smaller with the space it takes up on his face, and it scares the shit out of Dex, to be honest.

✿ ✿ ✿

It’s later, that the questions come.  
  
They drift down from the bottom bunk the way leaves fall from trees when the wind gets cold enough to burn the corners of your eyes.  
  
(Dex has to stop googling poetry and do pining like a normal person, holy shit.)  
  
“So, Aidan, huh?”  
  
“What about him?” The clock reads 1:03.  
  
“He your boyfriend? Or something?”  
  
“Or something.”  
  
“Hey Dex?” The clock reads 1:06.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“What’s or something?”  
  
“I don’t know,” and Dex doesn’t. He’s never had to articulate this to another human being before.  
  
“You don’t have to answer if I’m making you uncomfortable.” Dex answers anyways.  
  
“We’ve been friends forever. And or something for awhile. Since high school.” The clock reads 1:07. “Not boyfriends.”  
  
“Oh,” Nursey replies. “Cool.”  
  
“Cool?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Dex?”  
  
“Yes, Nursey?” 1:10.  
  
“You know that I’m bi, right?”  
  
“Yeah,” and Dex does know this, he just doesn’t like to talk (or think or anything) about it, and not for the douche-homophobic reasons everyone assumes, either. (More for logic reasons. If Nursey likes guys, and doesn’t like Will, then the problem is not with guys, it’s with Will, and it stings a little more than he’d care to admit.)  
  
“Cool.”  
  
“Cool?”  
  
“So cool.” Dex blinks into the darkness.  
  
“Hey, Nursey?” He asks.  
  
“Yeah?” Nursey replies, and Dex feels the bunk bed jolt a little, like Nursey sat up for some reason. The clock reads 1:13.  
  
“Go to sleep.”

✿ ✿ ✿

Nursey is staring at him now, which is not helping things.  
  
Dex catches him staring across the breakfast table, and on the walk to class, and on the bench at practice, and once when he wakes up during a roadie, Nursey is awake on the other bed in the admittedly less-shitty-than-expected hotel room, and just fuckin’ _looking_ at him.  
  
Contrary to popular belief, Dex is not a complete and total idiot when it comes to these things (he’s just uneducated, okay? In like, a really technical sense) so he knows it has something to do with the whole gay thing, and maybe _(probably)_ the conversation they had in the dark that night.  
  
He decides to bring it up as gently as possible. (For his own sake, mostly.)  
  
Dex waits until the Haus is empty on a Monday morning, with everyone else gone to class, waits until Nursey rolls out of bed and heads directly for the coffee maker in the kitchen.  
  
He even waits until Nursey is on his second cup before he sits on the stool beside him and asks,  
  
“Can I ask you something?” And he’s expecting _you just did_ , or, _go for it, Poindorkster_. Instead, Nursey blinks at him once, and then twice, and asks,  
  
“Can I kiss you?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“What?” Then Nursey blinks hard, a third time, like he’s waking up, and goes, “Oh,” and slams his mug off the counter hard enough to chip it. “Sorry. I’m— _what_?”  
  
“That was the least graceful thing I’ve ever seen you do and you didn’t even leave your stool,” Dex says, a little stunned. (A lot stunned, who is he kidding.)  
  
Nurse’s eyebrows furrow, and he pushes his stool back from the counter with both hands splayed on the countertop, not looking at Dex anymore at all and—  
  
“Nursey, wait—” He doesn’t. Dex stands and follows him, catching up at the mouth of the stairs, grabbing Nursey’s wrist before he can take a single step up. “Nursey—” He starts, and that’s not right. “ _Derek_.” He tries, and that’s better, and Derek’s eyes are very very close and very very green, so Will kisses him.  
  
And Derek kisses him back.  
  
And it’s one hell of a kiss.  
  
It’s exactly what Will has spent about a year aggressively not thinking about, with Derek’s back ending up against the wall, and one of his hands at Will’s throat, and the other just tangled with his own, fingers locked together. Will got a hand in Nursey’s hair at some point, at the base of his skull, where it’s always looked especially soft, and they go for longer than Will would ever care to admit, making out in the staircase, until Will pulls away long enough to mutter,  
  
“You ask a lot of awkward questions,” and Derek laughs and tips his head back against the wall hard enough for it to bounce, smiling that scary smile (it’s not so frightening at the moment) and says,  
  
“Well, we can’t have you getting too comfortable.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! visit me on tumblr at plastichouseplants, where i am accepting prompts and overtures of friendship at all times.


End file.
